... in private hands are owned by 20% of the population, and further that the percentage of households with firearms has actually decreased markedly over the last three decades from 50% in 1980 to 32% today, I'd argue that we are not in fact witnessing a surge in new gun owners.

Rather, it's likely further indicative of yet another senseless amassment of even more more high-powered weaponry by the same paranoid right-wing minority of hate radio and Fox News devotees, whose fears are stoked regularly by both the National Rifle Association and the Republican Party.

I wonder if the same people who just have to have
all these guns are the same people who could only feel safe and secure with the knowledge that we had just as many nukes and chemical weapons as the Rooskies did (or as we were told they did.)

Do more and more guns, nukes, land mines, cluster bombs, flamethrowers, throwing knives and blow guns allow people to rest easier; to be less suspicious, and serene and at peace with one's neighbors?

Groups of people, families, societies, cultures, can become mentally ill. Ill individuals can concentrate the sickness of a group, often because the group needs to image and then distance and then blame.

This culture is one that loves guns as an expression of emotion. So while Lanza might well have what we would call a disorder, his expression of that fits right into our culture.

In India women are very vulnerable to rape for many cultural reasons and the laws reflect that too. It is very difficult to prosecute rape there. Now that culture is reflecting on itself and its laws after the horrific rape/murder. We need to reflect too.

We love guns. We put gun "rights" above other rights. So unless the larger picture starts to be questioned, we can expect more rejected, isolated, mentally disturbed individuals will use guns to express their emotions.